Do I need to take skirting boards off prior to tiling a kitchen/utility floor?

no it does not matter if you rmeove the skirting or not. prefebably not as over time if you wish to carpet the floor or laminate or change the tiles you would have to remove the skirting again. therefore i would tile up to the skirting. make sure you tack down half inch ply to tile to. gareth knibbs A1 PLASTERING AND TILING (ROTHERHAM)

no you do not need to ,if your neat enough with your cuts you can tile up to the skirting board ,then seal around edge with a flexible sealer as its likely to crack ...but i would recommend taking them off if you can, then you can tile up to the walls refit skirting and end up with a much neater finish ..all the best

No you don't have to, but if you have small skirting, say 3inch high then it would look better to take them off and replace with new as if you just tile upto them, it will reduce the height of them further still, which in my opinion small skirting boards don't look great. (but each to their own) Also, you don't have to tack down half inch ply as metioned above unless its a wooden floor and if its concrete, then you can just tlie directly onto that. Cheers.

to get a better finsh it is advisable to remove skirting as it also hides any defect on the tile work.

No it's not essential but it does look far better, but any tiler worth his salt would have his tiles cut tight up to the skirtings & with a nice neat silicone joint around the room you wouldn't know the difference. You do however have to take off & cut the kitchen unit kickboards as you will struggle to get them off again if tiled up to. Also, there's no need for half inch ply on wooden floors if you use a slightly more expensive high flex adhesive which is designed & guaranteed to go straight onto chipboard. P.S. The little extra for the 2 part adhesive is covered by the expense of the ply & labour of fitting that. (you are actually better off) Hope this helps. Thanks